Program 1 - Festival Opening

Piano Concerto No. 1 in C major, Op. 15

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

Composed in 1798.

Premiered in October 1798 in Prague, with the composer as soloist.

“His genius, his magnetic personality were acknowledged by all, and there was, besides, a gaiety and animation about the young Beethoven that people found immensely attractive. The troubles of boyhood were behind him: his father had died very shortly after his departure from Bonn, and by 1795, his brothers were established in Vienna, Caspar Karl as a musician, Johann as an apothecary. During his first few months in the capital, he had indeed been desperately poor, depending very largely on the small salary allowed him by the Elector of Bonn. But that was all over now. He had no responsibilities, and his music was bringing in enough to keep him in something like affluence. He had a servant, for a short time he even had a horse; he bought smart clothes, he learned to dance (though not with much success), and there is even mention of his wearing a wig! We must not allow our picture of the later Beethoven to throw its dark colors over these years of his early triumphs. He was a young giant exulting in his strength and his success, and a youthful confidence gave him a buoyancy that was both attractive and infectious. Even in 1791, before he left Bonn, Carl Junker could describe him as ‘this amiable, lighthearted man.’ And in Vienna he had much to raise his spirits and nothing (at first) to depress them.” Peter Latham painted this cheerful picture of the young Beethoven as Vienna knew him during his twenties, the years before his deafness, his recurring illnesses and his titanic struggles with his mature compositions had produced the familiar dour figure of his later years.

Beethoven came to Vienna for good in 1792, having made an unsuccessful foray in 1787, and he quickly attracted attention for his piano playing. His appeal was in an almost untamed, passionate, novel quality in both his manner of performance and his personality, characteristics that first intrigued and then captivated those who heard him. It was for his own concerts that Beethoven composed the first four of his five mature piano concertos. (Two juvenile essays in the genre are discounted in the numbering.) The Concerto No. 1 (1798) was actually the second to be written, but was given the lower number because the earlier B-flat Concerto (1795) was several months later in reaching publication. Both scores appeared in 1801, the delay apparently caused by Beethoven’s desire to keep them from his rivals and reserve them for his personal use.

The opening movement of the First Piano Concerto is indebted to Mozart for its handling of the concerto-sonata form, for its technique of orchestration, and for the manner in which piano and orchestra are integrated. Beethoven added to these quintessential qualities of the Classical concerto a wider-ranging harmony, a more openly virtuosic role for the soloist and a certain emotional weight characteristic of his large works. The second movement is a richly colored song with an important part for the solo clarinet. The rondo-finale is written in an infectious manner reminiscent of Haydn, brimming with high spirits and good humor.

Symphony No. 9 in C major, “Great”

Franz Schubert (1797-1828)

Composed in 1825-1828.

Premiered on March 21, 1839 in Leipzig, conducted by Felix Mendelssohn.

One of the pleasures of a visit to Vienna in years gone by, as it remains today, was the chance to commune with the shades of the great masters — to breath the air of the Wienerwald; to stop for a leisurely Kaffee mit Schlag at some ancient café; to stand misty-eyed and pensive before silent gravestones. Robert Schumann was not immune to these charms when he went to Vienna in the autumn of 1838. He was looking to improve his fortunes from those he had known in Germany, and he thought the imperial city of the Habsburgs might be a lucky place for him. It was not to be. As with many men of genius, Vienna threw up a cold shoulder to him, and Schumann’s visit lasted only a few months.

Two of the places Schumann was most eager to visit when he arrived in Vienna were the gravesites of the composers who stood above all others in his estimation. This was easily accomplished as Beethoven and Schubert were buried side by side in the Währing Cemetery. (In later years, the bodies were moved to Vienna’s vast Central Cemetery.) Schumann, full of Jean-Paul’s fantasies and bursting with heady Romanticism, found a steel pen on Beethoven’s grave, and he took it to be an omen. It was with this enchanted instrument that he composed his First Symphony. Standing before Schubert’s grave had no less effect. In those early years after Schubert’s death at the age of 31 in 1828, his works were known only to a limited but devoted following of music lovers who were determined to see that he received the recognition he deserved. As one of that enthusiastic band, Schumann had his resolve strengthened as one of Schubert’s most ardent disciples by his visit to Währing Cemetery.

Franz Schubert’s brother, Ferdinand, a teacher of organ at a local conservatory, had become custodian of the unsorted piles of manuscripts that were left at the composer’s death. Ferdinand, whom Schumann described as “a poor schoolmaster, entirely without means and with eight children to support,” was trying to have Franz’s works performed and published, and he was happy to arrange a visit with Schumann, better known at the time as the editor of the important periodical Neue Zeitschrift für Musik (“New Journal for Music”) than as a composer. The two men met on New Year’s Day 1839 and Schumann set about digging through the musty stacks of manuscript paper. Among the many treasures waiting to be salvaged from this pile, Schumann discovered one of Schubert’s greatest jewels — the wondrous C major Symphony. (The extent of these then-unknown compositions may be appreciated if it is realized that three decades later George Grove — author of the first edition of the music dictionary that still bears his name — and Arthur Sullivan — who was to become England’s most successful composer of operetta — were still able to uncover among them the scores for the Symphonies Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4 and 6, the incidental music to Rosamunde, and many songs and choral works.) As Schumann excitedly turned the pages of the bulky manuscript, he realized that he had in his hands something of surpassing beauty, perhaps Schubert’s greatest work. Later he wrote, “I was in a state of bliss. It is not possible to describe it; all the instruments are human voices; it is gifted beyond measure, and the instrumentation is superb ... and this length, this heavenly length, like a novel in four volumes. I was completely happy.” He had a copy of the score made and sent to Felix Mendelssohn, then director of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, with an urgent plea for the work’s performance. Mendelssohn at once realized the extraordinary nature of the Symphony, and he revealed it to the world in a performance only three months after Schumann had unearthed the score.

Little is known of the circumstances of the composition of the C major Symphony. Schubert had no commission for the work, and it was certainly too difficult for the amateur musical societies for which most of his earlier symphonies had been written. The finished score was dated in March 1828, but when the composition was begun is uncertain. It is known that he was working on a symphony during a country retreat in the summer of 1825. That score, the mysterious “Gmunden-Gastein” Symphony, has never surfaced, and it was long assumed that the work had disappeared without a trace. John Reed, in a 1959 article in Music and Letters, however, presented strong evidence that the labor in 1825 was actually on this C major Symphony, and that the “missing” work never existed. (Schubert’s Seventh Symphony, incidentally, exists only as an extended but incomplete sketch.) It seems likely that Schubert hoped for a performance of the C major Symphony by the orchestra of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna. A friend reported that Schubert had decided at the time that he was finished with song writing, and would devote himself henceforth to opera and symphony. This Symphony and the magnificent C major Quintet are evidence of the importance Schubert gave to large instrumental pieces late in his brief life. At any rate, the score was submitted to the Viennese organization, which accepted it for consideration. It is uncertain if they held a trial run-through of the work (if they did, it would have been the only time Schubert could have heard any of this music), but it was decided that the piece would not be performed publicly because of its length and difficulty. It was a full decade before Schumann again brought the score to light.

Schubert’s C major Symphony opens with a broad introductory melody intoned by the horns. This theme not only establishes the mood and tonality of the piece, but also serves, with its emphasis on a dotted (long–short) rhythmic pattern, as the germ from which much of the material of the movement is derived. The strings provide a complementary phrase before the trombones restate the opening melody. (The burnished tone color of the trombones is an important component of the orchestral sonority of the Symphony, and their treatment shows a significant advance by Schubert in the art of orchestration.) The main part of the movement begins, at a quicker tempo, with the presentation of the main theme by the strings. This section is enlivened by the interplay between this skipping theme and a contrasting triplet rhythm supplied by the woodwinds. The second theme, a melody in E minor given by the oboes and bassoons, has a slight flavor of the Gypsy about it. The third section of the exposition is a re-examination of the melody from the introduction, employing the rich tones of the trombones. The exposition closes with a grand, lyrical theme (in G major) for full orchestra. The development is a masterful construction into which are woven all of the themes of the movement: dotted-rhythm main theme, woodwind triplets, second theme and introductory melody. The recapitulation returns all of the earlier themes in heightened settings. The coda is vivified by a faster tempo and an exalted version of the first theme materials. The movement closes with a triumphant restatement of the introductory melody, a magnificent transformation of the quiet opening into a joyous proclamation that seems to ring to heaven.

The second movement shares its introspective mood with Schubert’s late song cycle Die Winterreise. Its form is subject to more than one interpretation (sonatina — sonata without development — is perhaps the closest description), and the best way to listen to this music is as a series of splendid melodies, carefully balanced in mood, tonality and emotional weight. Schumann wrote that this movement “seems to have descended from another sphere. And every instrument seems to listen, as if aware that a heavenly guest had glided into the orchestra.”

The Scherzo, bursting with the vibrant energy of a peasant festival, is illuminated by Schubert’s unerring sense of melody, tone color and formal balance. This Scherzo itself is actually a complete sonata structure, containing a true development section that explores some wonderful Romantic harmonies. The central trio encompasses one of the most inspired melodies in all of the symphonic literature, a triumph of Viennese Gemütlichkeit, sentiment and sensuality.

The finale bristles with a barely contained riot of unquenchable high spirits. Perhaps only in the last movement of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony is there a comparable whirling, Dionysian rhythmic exuberance. One of the manifold miracles of this Symphony is the manner in which the ebb and flow of this bursting energy is controlled to produce a large, perfectly proportioned formal structure. Every page is part of a logical progression leading to an ending which is satisfying, overwhelming and seemingly inevitable. This movement is an indelible reminder that every composition of Schubert, who died at the age of only 31, was a youthful work, brimming with the vital life force.

©2007 Dr. Richard E. Rodda